From a former editor of The Guardian:
Here's news of a landmark development, courtesy of RFE/RL's Brussels correspondent Rikard Jozwiak:
EU Formally Approves Ukraine Association Agreement
BRUSSELS -- The European Union's 28 member states on July 11 formally endorsed the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.
This is the final step in the ratification process, and the deal will enter into force on September 1 after years of political twists and turns surrounding the document.
The landmark deal was initially slated for signing in November 2013. But the Ukrainian president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, walked away from it under pressure from Moscow, prompting massive protests that pushed him from power in February 2014.
Russia responded by annexing Ukraine's Crimea region and providing military and economic support to separatists in a war against Kyiv that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine.
Current Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the EU agreement in June 2014, but it remained unratified after 61 percent of Dutch voters opposed it in a citizen-driven, nonbinding referendum in April 2016.
The Dutch government eased voters' concerns in December the same year by negotiating a legally binding supplement to the Association Agreement with the other 27 EU member states to underscore that it will not give Kyiv the right to automatic EU membership or guarantee any EU military aid for Ukraine.
The Netherlands ratified the Association Agreement in June after both its lower house and Senate voted in favor of it earlier this year.